Review: MACHINE HEAD – “Unto the Locust”

Tracklist:
1. I Am Hell (Sonata in C#)
I) Sangre Sani
II) I Am Hell
III) Ashes to the Sky
2. Be Still and Know
3. Locust
4. This is the End
5. Darkness Within
6. Pearls Before the Swine
7. Who We Are

Release Date: 26 September 2011 – Roadrunner Records

“When the world is yours”

When you are in a band for almost a decade and you reach the top of everything with an album that will change the days and nights of many people, it is somehow logical not to have many chances to have the same success for second time again, especially in nowadays. Machine Head became the boss with “The Blackening”
and four years after they came back with the anticipated as it seemed “Unto The Locust”.

Would the new achievement reach the high level of the previous, would it contain songs that could make you proud of them again without the possibility of disappointment? Questions that were wandered inside the heads of their fans and eventually they had their answers. In a discussion with a friend of mine he told
me that “Unto The Locust” is not what he had been awaiting for and that because according to him they spend for years to make and record it and it does not carry the weight of the previous one. I agree with him and I believe that this album is just a little not so strong, but no matter what we think, it is as metal as we want to hear from bands like them.

Leaving beside the groove vocals of Robb Flynn, that are not my cup of tea, the guys for one more time wrote songs that have the authentic signature of Machine

Head and honor the legends of our beloved music whether we are talking about Metallica, Black Sabbath, or Judas Priest. The taste of freshness in the songs is being surged no matter how many times you are going to listen to them. You want darkness, angry and groove till the end, you have “I Am Hell” with the best ending in a metal song for the previous year. Anything you are searching for in a metal album you can find it hear, even if we are talking for supplies of the teachers from the glory ‘70s, something being showed in the beginning of “This Is The End”. This
song is just one of the anthems of the album, the second one and my favorite is “Who We Are”. While you are listening to it you want to shout its chorus as loud as you can, so that the whole world can hear. The result of the album shows what happens when during your way of thinking you have above your head posters of “Number Of The beast”, “Black Sabbath” and “Master Of Puppets”. Do something carefully, concentrate all yourself, all your
thoughts to “Locust” and listen the part just before the solo, all the world of heavy metal is inside that guitar part, in that riff and it is also a proof that Robb Flynn and Phil Demmel are one the best guitar duo in the world. Incredible, even your
ears can smile by hearing it.

Now what are the chances for Machine Head to record for third time in the line an album like “The Blackening” and “Unto The Locust”? We do not know, but the point is not to make something common to those, the point for them is to try hard as they did then and they will get what they deserve. Some people say Machine Head are the head of thrash while some others regard them as the ambassadors of NWOAM (new wave of American metal). I do not care where to put them, but I know that they can easily be regarded as the future of general metal.